Elaina M. Roberts's Blog: News from the Between, page 11

Giveaway Reminder

Just a quick note that the week-long giveaway begins at midnight, US CDT (which is GMT -5). I’ll also be lurking around a few other websites during the week, hawking my book like a creepy carnival worker. Or a loud and belligerent fishwife. Since I refused to dress like a clown, I suppose I’ll just have to wrap this fish in my book and hope for the best. Because clowns are scary.

What will really happen, is that each day, a tidbit, extra, etc is scheduled to autopost at one minute after midnight. Read the post, answer the question in the comments, and secure a spot for the daily ebook giveaway. Once I’ve approved the day’s comments the following day, I’ll use this Random Number Generator to pick a number. Starting with one (1) for the oldest comment, I’ll plug in the number of comments available per day and let it choose the winner.

Initial Proof Copy

Also available on the sidebar will be the Rafflecopter main giveaway for the $25 Amazon Gift Card and a signed paperback. And because I’m really desperate begging excited to spread the word about my debut novel, I’ll also be offering a Smashwords coupon code to purchase The Other Half for only 99 cents! The code will only be good until the contest ends on July 14, so use it while it’s valid!

Please?

Subject 5691 – Petri

So, in talking with a fellow writer who goes by NightTempest, I may have mentioned the joys of writing Flash Fiction. I may have even encouraged her to join a few sites that give photo or word prompts. At a stretch, I might have even suggested that she host one herself. Not too long afterwards, I received the following photo and a 2000 word limit. At first, I went over by 16 words. A few snips here, a slight cut there, and I’ve brought it in at an exact 2000 word count.

Now, before you start reading, head over to her site, read her story (it’s lovely!), ooh and ahh and comment, then come back here and read about Subject 5691.

NightTempest – Writing Prompt 1

Subject 5691 prowled the small room. He knew the scientists were watching. He knew they expected something from him. He was determined not to give it to them. The chip around his neck gave a single, low-frequency beep; he ignored it. They knew he heard it. He knew they knew. It drove them crazy when he refused to acknowledge the sound. It threw off their baseline… whatever that meant. He simply enjoyed doing anything that made them uneasy or unhappy.

The room’s stark interior played hell with his senses. The bright light from the recessed panels in the walls threatened to blind him as it reflected off the undecorated endless white of the room. The only thing that broke the monotony of his colorless world was the black bracket that framed two long, iridium-filled light wands. He paced the room, trailing his fingers along the uneven bumps and ridges of the frame, and waited. For what, he didn’t know, but he knew he needed to wait. Somehow he knew the time wasn’t right. It didn’t look right; it didn’t feel right; it didn’t taste and smell right. When it did, he would be able to escape this stark, desolate hell.

The chip chirped several more times. He reacted to some, ignored the others, and paced the small room. Back and forth, his fingers playing over the cool metal cage surrounding the iridium wands, until one his hundredth pass (his thousandth?) he felt it. A small bump, barely larger than the head of those needles they jabbed into his flesh with such glee, protruded near the very top of the cage. His heart raced. His breath caught in his throat, but he kept walking. It would not do for the scientists to see him as anything other than calm.

It took three more passes before he was satisfied with his count. Fifteen bumps lined the edge of the cage. Fifteen small bits of metal that retracted when pushed. Fifteen steps closer to freedom. He caught the smile before it crept over his lips; closed his eyes before the damnedable scientists noticed their unholy glow. He would not alert them to a change in his routine. He would not lose his moment, his chance, now that he knew it for what it was.

More pacing, but with a difference. Subject 5691 raised both hands over his head, skimming along the metal cage as he bowed his head in thought. After their last assault on his brainstem, they’d allowed his hair to grow. He’d cursed their decision during the itchy, uncomfortable stubble stage. Now, he cheered in silent stoicism. The long strands hid his face and eyes from their intruding cameras, and let him plot.

He pressed every other bump along the narrow cage, popping it out of its assigned notch. His movements were fluid, his fingers nimble, and the metal rewarded him with blessed silence. His bracelet flashed. A warning that his tormentors were on their way. A signal that time was running out. Three more passes and he had released all but the end tabs from their notches. The iridium wands were a cheap source of light… and an excellent if crude weapon. The soulless demon that visited him this night would meet a horrific, agonizing death. This time, he allowed the smile to curve his lips.

Soon it would be over.

As the beeps from the coded lock filtered into the small cell, Subject 5691 turned to face the door. His hands remained over his head, braced on the metal cage. His fingers caressed the remaining two protrusions. When the scientist entered the room, his smile grew, and revealed the points of his curved fangs as they pressed against his bottom lip.

“Subject 5691, why didn’t you respond to the signal?”

He looked from the mousy scientist to the two burly guards just outside the door. They had grown lax in their time on the ship and his compliance. That would help him this day. His fangs throbbed in anticipation; he could taste their blood on his tongue, savor their final heartbeat. His fingers pressed the two metals bumps, releasing them from their notched cages, and waited for the perfect opportunity.

“Your attitude has been most disappointing, Petri.” He snarled silently at the deliberate slur. Petri. A harsh and cruel reminder that he was nothing more than a collection of cells to these barbarians, an experiment to poke and prod and destroy with as much insolent care as they created him. He stared through his hair at the despised demon that called itself a man, and inched the cage from around its prize. “If you don’t cooperate, we’ll limit your food intake, again, starting with –“

The man’s voice droned on as Subject 5691 slipped the irradiated iridium wand from its housings. He gripped the fragile tube in his hands, watching the scientist tap out the order to reduce his food intake to starvation levels. When a smile played across the evil man’s thin lips, Petri snapped his prize in half, and jammed one end through the scientist’s thick glasses. The eyeball popped as the wand oozed its deadly chemicals into the screaming man’s body. Petri spun out of the door’s line of sight and flattened against the wall.

The scientist’s convulsing body blocked the door from closing, giving Petri the opportunity to reach through the opening and grab the first of the guards. The other half of the wand sank into the burly man’s neck with a satisfying squelch. He retrieved the dying guard’s pulsegun, easily dispatching other as he struggled to call for backup. Sinking his fangs into the second guard’s throat, he drank deep of the untainted blood.

Wiping his lips, Petri slipped the locator chip from around his neck, then searched the scientist’s shriveled corpse for the key to the bracelet. He movements were smooth and efficient as he stuffed the chip into the scientist’s mouth, removed the wire from his wrist, and stripped a guard of his uniform. Dressed and armed, he pushed the bubbling, putrid flesh of the widely respected biogeneticist into the cell and locked the door behind him.

He was free!

Petri suppressed the urge to run. Instead, he tucked his long hair beneath the standard issue cap, and strolled towards the stairwell. A sign by the door sported a stick-figure walking down steps followed by several strings of precise, but unintelligible symbols. As his fingers traced each curve and line of the painted symbols, he cursed his creators with newfound fury. He had once heard them debate teaching him to read the common script of the Alliance, but they had dismissed the idea as unnecessary. The scientists saw little use in teaching a failed experiment how to read. Slipping through the door, he sped down the narrow stairs.

******

Grokhaar Xandria unhooked the fuel drone from his ancient scavenger vessel and tapped in the code to transfer credits from his Alliance account. The Furthark-Kandarian run was always profitable. Their centuries long war created a bountiful harvest of abandoned vessels, many of them luxury cruisers overflowing in lazanthium crystals and exhausted iridium wands, and all just ripe for the plucking. And he was one lucky plucking den’lastrian this trip.

He tightened the straps on the last of his supplies, adjusted a few crates to cover the hatches over his less-than-legal cargo, and secured the bay doors. Time to get off this oppressive station and back out into the open sky where he belonged. He hated being around the Alliance for longer than it took to take their credits. Cooped up in a spinning death trap out in the middle of the neutral zone twisted them all into soulless, aggressive Silaurian Listertharks looking to compensate for inability to transfer back onto a real planet. Their hatred for the fringe worlders was only exceeded by their suspicion of independent entrepreneurs like himself. As he fell into both categories, they made it quite plain that they didn’t appreciate him sullying their pristine space station with his filthy hide.

“To the eight sun with the lot of you, blasted listers,” he muttered as he stomped up the creaking ramp and into his ship and into the barrel of an Alliance pulsegun. “For the love of a Kandarian sunset, what the thark do you want?”

The soldier waved him further into the ship, his dark eyes hidden by the brim of a cap that seemed too large for his head. In fact, the entire outfit fit the slender man’s frame poorly, from his baggy trousers stuffed into overlarge boots to his jacket that hung from his shoulders like a burlap sack. Even though the man held a gun steady to his face, the effect was like a boy playing dress-up in his dad’s clothing. A smile curved his lips at the thought.

“Listen. I got no love for the Alliance. If you need a way off this piece of junk, you’ve got to let me go through my standard launch routine. I deviate from the norm, and they’ll be all over this ship like Walsingian maggots on a rotten bettedeer. You understand?”

He watched the ‘soldier’ consider his words, give a curt nod, and raise the barrel of the pulsegun a few bare inches. With a snort, he retracted the ramp and secured it into position while considering what to do with his unexpected passenger. The smartest thing to do would be to alert the Alliance, but something stopped him. Not the pulsegun – he’d been shot enough times to know they gave one great tharking bruise but did little actual harm – but something in the boy’s stance, in the fathomless darkness of his eyes, in the sweet patchouli scent that tickled his nose and made his britches tight.

“You might want to ditch the boots,” Grokhaar called over his shoulder as he plugged in the first set of coordinates. As soon as he was outside the station’s range, he would change them to his actual destination but they demanded a flight plan so he gave him one. “As big as they are, you’re only going to trip over your feet if you try to run in them. Best just go without.”

The solid thud of a boot hitting the metal floor brought a smile to the old den’lastrian’s face. The boy might be quiet, but he wasn’t so full of himself that he couldn’t listen to a bit of advice. He knew those dark eyes watched his every movement. He also knew that if he did something to place his stowaway in danger, he would wake up with a raging headache and a bruise the size of this station. So, he explained every step in the hopes of preventing a painful misunderstanding.

“Just waiting on the clearance codes, then we can leave this floating piece of space junk. You’ll want to have a seat and strap in before we take off. The force required to leave their gravitational pull is a bischel.”

The young man stepped towards a chair, running his fingers over the treated and tanned bettedeer hide, an expression of wonder on his beautiful face. His dark hair flopped over eyes as he caressed the soft leather, allowing Grokhaar to study his guest unobserved. He had the barest trace of stubble along his jaw that called to the scavenger’s fingers. The boy’s chest was smooth, with dark brown nipples and well defined muscles. His fingers twitched again. As his eyes drifted lower, he realized the boots weren’t all the young man had removed, and his eyes drank in the sight of the beautiful, naked creature who had stumbled onto his ship.

A soft hiss brought his eyes away from the most delightful specimen of male manhood he had seen in many a year. He adjusted his trousers, and motioned to the chair. The panel lit up as he strapped his new companion into the chair. This was proving to be a most lucrative run.

Gearing up for promo week

So, next week I’ll be doing a week long promotional posting festival with clowns and prizes and dancing bears… okay, maybe not the dancing bears, and clowns creep me out, but definitely prizes. Oh, and excerpts from my debut novel, The Other Half, deleted scenes from the original alpha version, as well as several other goodies and extras.

There’ll be a daily giveaway for a copy of the ebook (yup, seven in all), and it’ll end with me throwing the book at you. Literally. Okay, I won’t throw it, but I’ll mail it! On Sunday night, rafflecopter will shower me with info as to whom gets a $25 Amazon Gift Card and who gets a signed copy of the paperback.

So, this week, I’ve been prepping the daily posts and feeling all productive but having absolutely nothing to show for it. Seriously, I have seven posts sitting in the queue, scheduled to post in the near future while the page just sits here and looks at me. It glares. This makes Elaina very sad

To make up for my flurry of hidden productivity, I’ve finally set up a Facebook author site HERE. Sadly, it has seen about as much activity as the blog. I do hope to change that as soon as I get these preparatory posts out of the way. So watch this spot. Stay tuned. And all those other clichés I can’t think of at the moment. Things will start rolling shortly.

The Time of Choosing

Once more I dive into Nulli Para Ora‘s Musings. This one caused me a bit of trouble – not because of what I wanted to say, but where to begin the story. This is definitely a plot bunny that wants to come out and play. I know this story and I want to finish it. I may have found my reason for Camp NaNoWriMo beyond editing! We shall see.

Photo prompt – a glorious carving of a pair of dragons

Word count – 667

Glowing spheres surrounded the enormous relief, their bright blue lights illuminated the intricate carving’s brilliant colors in the pre-dawn darkness. The sculpture depicted the port kingdom’s saviors at the moment of their greatest triumph. Ferak’shar from the neighboring planet of Shar’tranak had long coveted the water planet, attacking when its people devolved into petty squabbles and senseless wars. The twin dragons, rulers of the Golden Sun and the Azure Sea, had emerged from their eons-long sleep to save their people from the brink of extinction.

 But everything requires a price.

 Ten days ago, the spheres changed from pale green to warm amber. A signal that the Time of Choosing drew near. The royal family, city officials, and leaders of society kicked off the festive week with block parties and balls. They opened their doors to everyone, from the lowliest beggar to visiting royalty. Food and wine flowed like water; but underneath it all was a sense of furtive desperation.

 Last night, the yellow began to fade to white-blue. The balls and parties ended, and families huddled together. Those who believed, prayed. Those who didn’t, prepared. Some risked the shame and humiliation of capture by trying to flee the city. Mothers kissed their children; husbands kissed their wives. The Choosing allowed few exceptions.

 After a sleepless night, those who qualified formed a line at the base of the revered and despised relief. At a signal from the king, the Prospects started the climb up the winding staircase that spiraled almost to the top. There, they were to touch the golden sphere to see if they were Chosen or Forgiven. The Gods of the Sun and Sea chose but one every five years, signaled by the orb’s glow. They were indiscriminate in their choices – gender mattered not, nor did appearance or status or wealth – but generous as well. Though required to participate, few married Prospects, and none with small children were Chosen.

 Malah’kar approached the platform, clenching her hands to stop their trembling. There were three females and two males before her. All were weeping, though the men managed to hide it better. Two behind her had fainted. Three had tried to run. She pitied them the most. They would still have to participate, but then they, and their families would be shunned by the rest of the Kingdom.

 She prayed to the Sun and Sea that she could change this forever.

 The guards moved forward to escort a young female Prospect towards the sphere. She fought their gentle but firm hold, crying and begging for mercy. The grief on the guards’ faces tore at Malah’kar’s heart. What had been a joyous blessing from the Gods now only brought sorrow. The Choosing fostered hatred and despair in the once-happy kingdom. The people talked of the good times, the old times, and speculated on what-ifs. Some proposed that even the despotic rule of the cruel Ferak’shar would seem a blessing over the Time of Choosing.

 The young man before her stumbled on the way to the relief, his eyes locked on a young woman heavy with child at the base of the mural. The wailing of the many drowned out her wrenching sobs, but Malah’kar imagined she could hear them anyway. The guards approached, equal parts dutiful and sympathetic, and helped him close the final distance. They understood the pain and the uncertainty. They had been the first to approach the sphere.

 Suddenly, it was her turn.

 Squaring her shoulders, the young woman approached the glorious mural with steady steps. Fear warred with determination, and she too faltered in the last few feet. Yet when the guards approached, she waved them off. She was Malah’kar; she would not allow a stone carving to reduce her to a sniveling child. As she laid her hand upon the smooth stone sphere, she muttered the last words heard by her kingdom.

 “Pick me, damn you.”

 The sphere flashed.

There was a sense of falling.

And then there was nothing.

 The Gods had Chosen.

It’s Live!

You can buy The Other Half! Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’ll babble at you a bit and then provide the pretty little links. My precious.

I had high hopes for my release date, perhaps too high. I wanted a solid date where the book was released across all platforms simultaneously so that folks could get it from whatever location was available. Yeah, that didn’t happen. 

From CreateSpace to Amazon – it says the listing could take as long as 5-7 days.

From Smashwords to the other retailers like Barnes & Nobles, Apple, Kobo, etc – they only push on Thursday/Friday and that’s only after you get approved for the premium catalogue which can take 1-2 weeks. If you unpublish your ebook, that starts the cycle over for the approval to premium/push.

Publishing to Amazon (ebook) takes a minimum of 12 hours and it may not link up with your physical book immediately.

So, what does this mean? It means in order for everything to actually be available by the first of July, the files have to be up early. I looked at the worst case scenarios and spent all day yesterday converting the files, uploading them, publishing them, screaming profanities, etc. They are now up and available for purchase (yay!) from the following locations:

Amazon (ebook)

Amazon (paperback)

CreateSpace (paperback)

Smashwords (ebook in all formats)

As soon as I get a direct link for Barnes & Noble, I’ll post it. It may take a couple of weeks. You can get the epub format from Smashwords.

I also plan to do an “official” launch with goodies around July 1st, so watch this space!

Thank you everyone for all the support I’ve experienced thus far. It does make me smile *runs around giving indiscriminate hugs*

Proof for The Other Half

It has been an exciting experience working towards self-publishing my first novel. I set an almost impossible timeline for the massive edit/revision of the original work and managed to not only hit the mark, but come in under the timeline. I started counting the days between receiving the physical proof and the hoped-for release date and worried I wouldn’t make it. Then, CreateSpace surprised me in a massive way.

I uploaded the final files on Wednesday. Received their acceptance of those files on Thursday and placed the order for the proof copy. I received it today. Yes, two days later. I’m amazed. And impressed. And squealing like a teen at a Bieber concert.

It’s gorgeous. I have pictures!

Initial Proof Copy

Back of the Proof Copy

An Answered Call

After an extended hiatus due to finalizing the edits on The Other Half, I’ve jumped back into some shorts with Nulli Para Ora’s Musings series. This week’s photo prompt was of a gorgeous forest at sunset. This is what I pulled from that picture:

She enjoyed this time of day most of all. As the sun sank into the western sky, it lit the forest with an explosion of color. Reds and oranges so vivid, they bled onto the surrounding foliage. Blues and purples so ethereal, they cast eerie shadows along the forest floor. She dodged between the towering trees, trusting the shadows to hide her from prying eyes. The wind ruffled her fur like teasing fingers. The leaves caressed her sides as she sped past their drooping boughs. Even the dark, moist soil embraced her, cushioning her paws as they pounded along the narrow trail.

A large owl spotted her as she darted past and screeched a warning to his mate. The answering cry faded to her right as she continued further into the darkening woods. She slowed to a trot when the stars appeared overhead. Her chest heaved; her fur lay against her sides, matted with sweat and dew. A stream provided ice-cold refreshment, though she remained alert to potential danger. Her tufted ears swiveled to capture and catalogue any sound that broke the stillness of the forest.

There!

A squirrel crept amongst the fallen leaves and pine straw, searching for ripe nuts or a fat mushroom. She licked the water from her lips, and eased towards the foolish creature. As the rodent rummaged through the displaced deadfall, the muffled noise disguised her careful footsteps. She was close enough to smell the creature’s delicious scent when she sprang forward to capture it in her jaws. Prancing back to the edge of the stream, she enjoyed her furry treat and washed the blood from her snout in the cool water.

She sat on her haunches, and stared up at the starlit sky. Having roamed these forests alone for three leaf-falls, she longed for a mate. She cried out her loneliness, pouring her desires and dreams into a long, guttural roar. As the bright moonbeams broke through the leafy canopy above, there came a low, rumbling reply.

Heart pounding, she surged to her feet. Her head and ears swiveled in search of the male; her snout lifted to the air to catch his scent. Her second roar echoed through the silent forest, sending the few remaining night birds fleeing into the sky. Again, he answered her cry. Louder. Closer. Torn between chasing after the distant male and remaining by the crystal clear stream, she took a few hesitant steps in the direction of his roar.

This time, he called to her. Insistent and commanding, he drew her towards him and she was powerless to resist. Her paws dug into the loose soil, branches tore at her fur, but she paid none of it any heed. She had asked the moon-gods to send her a mate, and they had answered her pleas. When she broke through the edge of the forest, she skidded to an ungraceful stop.

There he was.

Black and sleek and glistening in the pale moonlight, he stood waiting by the entrance to a dark cave. As she approached him with wary caution, he butted his large head against hers, his chest rumbling with a loud purr. His scent was heady, intoxicating, and she wanted to roll in it until it covered her entire body. His low, hissing growl let her know he felt the same. As he led the way into his cave, she took a last, lingering look at her forest and then followed her mate.

Introspection about The Other Half

I began this site when I started seriously looking at publishing. I had written several serial stories and posted them for free on other sites, gotten wonderful feedback, and felt that urge to jump into the shark-infested waters of becoming a published author. I was still in the midst of writing one of those serial pieces when I launched the site, but I was determined to keep the two separate. Yeah, that’s a bit daft, but that was my goal.

Five months later, and I’ve decided to take one of those serial stories to Amazon. I wanted to use something that was familiar to learn the ins and outs of converting to the proper format. I wanted something I was comfortable with to scour cover artists for the one that made me think “YES! This person nailed it.” I wanted to jump off the cliff into the circling fins while still wearing my yellow floaties.

So, I chose the first of my serial stories, a long and rambling piece I called The Other Half. Originally posted to an erotica website, the tale of Michael Zakhara and his mate, Kristiana Latimer, contains at least 30 characters, several minor story arcs, and some really awful point of view issues. Really, really awful ones. But the meat of the story still grabbed me. It was one I really wanted to tell, and tell it better than I had in that rough draft two years ago.

So I began the painful process of editing. And oh was it ever painful!

Some people call it “killing your darlings.” On his blog, terribleminds, Chuck Wendig tells us to hack away at the pretty, pretty peacocks. I loved the peacock analogy because it just fits. The original has all these extraneous scenes, even extraneous characters, that truly add little to nothing to the overall plot. As I began the edit, I realized they would have to go. I removed entire chunks of text. I cut back stories that fleshed out unnecessary characters, info dumps that made the brain numb, and characters that could be rolled into others already established as important. I cut a crap-ton of scenes that occur from one of the seemingly millions of points of view in the story. I’m only 70K words into the edit, and I’ve already cut over 50K words. 50-fucking-thousand words! I still have over 40K words to review, edit, and chop away at.

That’s a lot of damn peacocks.

On the flipside, I have added several thousand words. Perhaps as much as 10-15K of new material. Material that makes certain things make more sense, that ties into the sequel There’s a Fine Line, or that fleshed out the areas I thought fell short of the mark in the original. It’s been a long and painful and utterly enjoyable process. Early reviews of parts of the revised text are promising.

The easiest of everything has been the cover. I admit to playing a bit of cover artist roulette and hoping I found a winner. I believe I did. Laura LaRoche from LLPix Photography designed the excellent cover below for The Other Half. It’s exactly what I wanted. Michael in his natural form, Kris with her spunky attitude, and the hotel in the background. Perfect. Now to get back to those edits so I can get it out on time!

Cover for the first novel in the Revelations series.

Amazon Worlds

I’m going to get a bit ranty and a bit WTF and ‘holy shit, I can’t believe this is real.’ Amazon has contracted with Warner Brothers to do something they call “Kindle Worlds,” a place where you can SELL and EARN MONEY from FANFIC written for limited, specific works owned by WB (Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, and Gossip Girl so far).

Earn MONEY… for FANFIC!

Now, if anyone has looked through my list of stories on Lit (author – Mazuri), they know I’ve played in the fanfic pool using a mash-up of the book/musical ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ I’ve gone so far as to say that Help Me Say Goodbye is my favorite written piece; it still is. But that doesn’t mean I, in any way whatsoever, believe I should make money off it. The characters primarily belong to Gaston Leroux and Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber, along with the basic premise, the plot, the very world. I just tinkered and fiddled with it and made something I thought was groovy and a fun take. I never thought that made these characters MINE. They are still Leroux’s/Weber’s.

I like that the original creators get paid alongside the fanfic writers. I like that Amazon jumped through all the hoops to make this a legal, legitimate venture (like they’d do otherwise, but still….places like fanfic.net are constantly getting C&Ds).

What I don’t like is that it seems to encourage a sort of laziness in writers. Why create something new, unique, wonderful and yours when you can just pluck the characters from the Vampire Diaries and not have to worry about those pesky things like world building and character development?

What I don’t like is that it creates a blur between what is canon and what is not. What I don’t like is that the publisher could pressure the original author to include something that becomes vastly popular in fanfic if they thought it might sell better. What I don’t like is that it blurs the line between what is “mine” and what is “yours.”

I see it diluting this move as diluting the original “brand” to the point it’s detrimental to the original work. Why pay $7.99 for the newest Vampire Diaries book when you can pay $0.99 for a fanfic that has the three main folks in an explicitly erotic threesome while being showered with whipped cream and chocolate sauce by a slavering audience of gremlins? Why support the original author, when you can grab a fanfic and read about your favorite characters in an alternate steampunk universe battling clockwork bumblebees the size of a semi?

Folks will say that the choice is already there – you can read the originals or you can read the fanfic (for free!) – so what’s the difference? The difference is in cost. Most people have a finite amount of money they can spend on “fluff” – their hobbies, entertainment, etc. If they can buy three, four, or even five books in their favorite world for the same price as they could buy one… don’t you think they will? Granted, there will be plenty who will dismiss the fanfic as so much dreck and continue to support their favorite author/series, but I believe we will see that number drop once folks realize that there are some truly talented fanfic writers amongst the dreck.

When the Thunder Breaks the Sky

I’ve given several weeks of Chuck Wendig‘s Flash Fiction Fridays a pass due to Camp NaNoWriMo and working on the novel. Now that the first draft is finished, I decided to give it another try. For this week’s FFF Challenge, Chuck used a random sentence generator to create five sentences. We were to choose one and use it somewhere in our piece.

Sentence: When does the family document the thunder?

Wordcount – 726

*****

The thunder always terrified her. As a child, her parents dismissed her fear as the result of too much television combined with an overactive imagination. They limited her hours watching movies and screened what books she read but they didn’t see what she saw. In that split second in time between when the thunder boomed and then rumbled off into the distance, Alyssa saw the crack between the worlds. With every storm, with every peal of thunder, the crack widened and she grew more afraid.

As she entered her teen years, she learned to hide her fear. At least, until the first of the creatures slipped through the crack. It shot from the rip in reality and rode a bolt of lightning to the rain-soaked earth. Dark as midnight, it was an unrecognizable shadow upon the ground that consumed all living things it covered. Shapeless and formless, the creature moved along the ground like a sentient blob containing nothing but rows of jagged teeth and glowing red eyes. The eyes moved about its body as it devoured the living plant and animal matter in its path. And they saw her watching it.

She spent her early twenties in an institution. Her family reassured her that it was for the best. They only wanted to help. The doctors would help her overcome her senseless fears. Lyssa smiled, hugged them as they left, and didn’t let them know that she knew they lied. Her family was tired. They handed over a thick stack of paperwork containing all the records from previous psychiatrists, therapists, and neurologists. A second folder held other records, confidential records, private records; everything from her personal diaries to statements from her priest. They had documented everything except what was important.

“But what about the storms? What about the thunder?” Lyssa asked as she searched through the pile of useless bits of information.

“When does the family document the thunder?” The admitting psychiatrist dismissed her plea. “The thunder isn’t important, Lyssa, only your fear of it.” And she was taken away.

The first storm struck the area two weeks after she had been admitted. The doctors pulled her from her cell, strapped her to a roomful of machines, and elevated the bed so she was facing a wall of windows. As the rain soaked the earth, the first clap of thunder rolled across the sky. There it was! What had once been a tiny crack when she was a child was now a looming fissure teeming with creatures eager to explore this world. Alyssa stared into their glowing red eyes, watched as they pried open the rift to ride the lightning into our world. She struggled against the restraints, crying and begging the doctors to take her away. Her pleas fell on deaf ears as the machines lit up around the stark room, their random beeps and sirens signaling an influx of information that excited the doctors but ultimately meant nothing.

The second rumble of thunder shook the window panes and cracked open the sky. The room echoed with the cries of the doctors and technicians as they looked into the rift. They wept and huddled together, babbling about what they had seen. One illustrious psychiatrist, the greatest in his field, fell to the floor in a fetal position and soiled himself. Lyssa had little time to feel vindicated. As the thunder faded, the moment was lost, and the sky returned to normal, so too did the professionals. They dismissed the entire event as a mass hallucination… but they returned her to her room. As the days passed, every single one refused to admit that they still woke screaming from the nightmares.

Lyssa sits in her barren room, watching her world die through a tiny window. The tiny rift that once haunted her nightmares now hangs over the world like a scarlet cloak. The creatures have consumed one third of all life on Earth – plants, animals, humans – with no sign of stopping their gruesome buffet. As the ravenous blobs approach the institution, she scribbles a final note into her journal, a warning to any who may find it later.

So, that’s it. That’s what happened. I don’t know why or how. All I know is when someone asks you “ w hen does the family document the thunder?” The answer is always “when the thunder breaks the sky.”